Tag: Delia Jade

The past couple weeks, I have begun the first leg of my transition journey, the mental stage. I have had to process a lot of thoughts, feelings, opinions, and more all at once. But one of the most crucial pieces to me has been selecting my new name. The meaning of names has always been an important piece of my life, and I have always derived some part of myself from what I have been called.

When I was born, my parents bestowed upon my female form, the title “The Victorious Woman Crowned With Laurels Standing Solid As A Rock”, a grand title for such an unassuming person. So for simplicity purposes, they nicknamed me, “The Traitor”, a title I languished under until I bestowed upon myself a new nickname at the age 13, “The Victorious Girl”. Unsurprisingly, my family made fun of my name change, and to this day, has continued calling me by the moniker that cursed my childhood.

As I approach my transition with a new mindset, I have searched for a name to fit the person I am growing to become. I considered naming myself after my father to continue the long standing family tradition of naming male children in my family, “The Son Of My Right Hand Crowned With Laurels Standing Solid As A Rock”. However, it was agreed that the moniker did not fit me, and that my very religious, conservative family might consider it an insult. I also considered, “Close Friend”, at a recommendation from a house brother, and while I am honored, it again was not for me.

It was after a lot of consideration that I finally settled on my new title, and I am proud to present “The Son Of The Heart And Soul Crowned With Laurels Standing Solid As A Rock”. Welcome to the world, Phares Loren Hutchison!

For those of you who don’t know me, I am a transguy preschool teacher at a private Christian preschool. Obviously, I’m a masochist. I go to work every day hiding my identity behind a smile, an androgenous haircut, and a skirt. When I come home, my disphoria is so bad I immediately change clothes no matter where I have to be or what else I should be doing. It takes a lot out of me.

But yesterday, I not only came home disphoric. I came home angry. There is a little girl one of our classes who is a bit of a tomboy. She prefers to play with the dinosaurs and cars, and she cannot stand to play with the other little girls. Yesterday morning, on the playground, I noticed that she was hiding behind a toy, refusing to play all. I thought it was strange, but as I am not the teacher for her class, I was not responsible for what she decides to do during free play. I wrote it off, until afternoon playtime. When her class came out to join mine, I noticed that she was back to her normal self, racing toy motorcycles with the boys from her class. I smiled as I watched her, remembering what I was like at her age.

Suddenly, I was ripped from my happy memories by the shrill voice of her teacher, calling her over. “Stop playing with those boys!” Her teacher said, “You will get hurt. Go play princesses with the girls.”

“But i don’t like girls.”

“Why not? You’re a girl. I’m a girl. Ms. Delia Jade is a girl.” I stormed off, furious. I wanted to correct her, I wanted to tell her how horrible of a person she was for telling this little girl that what she enjoyed was wrong because it didn’t fit her gender identity but I couldn’t, not if I wanted to keep my job.

I’ve worked in other Christian preschools where it was accepted for boys to play with baby dolls and girls to play with cars, but we got a lot of flak from parents. WHY?! Boys are going to grow up to be fathers, and girls are going to grow up to drive a car. They need these life lessons just as much as anything else I can teach them. Why do we try to shove children in specific boxes when each one is unique and different. They are all going to grow up to be different things. Why try to make them all act the same now? I am fed up with the current system, and I am so thankful my teachers were so supportive of me. Even when my mother refused to let me play with GI Joes, my teachers let me pretend to be the red Power Ranger, and that meant a lot to four year old me.

I spent most of Friday excited about my “promotion” at work, only to be semi-triggered by my great aunt, to the point that I ran away and hid in the middle of a family meeting. I embarrassed myself, but everyone’s reactions taught me something about them.

Yesterday, I was feeling particularly emasculated; so I tried to cling to every bit of masculinity I have. We bought more clothes, mostly in camo, and a new bookshelf, which I insisted on putting together by myself. M kept pushing me to let him help, and every time he asked, it made me feel even more emasculated. I was pushing away those negative thoughts as best I could, yet they were starting to overwhelm me. As my thoughts became more chaotic, my actions became less precise. I ended up smashing my middle finger with the hammer, hammering two nails incorrectly, slamming my elbow in a door, and kicking the bed frame as I became more and more agitated. M and I ended up in a screaming match, and I ran. My feet took me out the front door, and I just kept going. I was paranoid, kept hearing voices or feeling presences behind me. I heard a siren at one point and thought they were coming to take me back to the hospital. I ran faster. I calmed some when I thought I heard Snow behind me. He never caught up, and I later learned that he was never there, but it was comforting to think that he cared enough to keep an eye on me. Somehow I ended up back at the house, and I crashed in the spare bedroom. My dreams were chaotic, panicked, and dark, but I seem to be doing better today.

Today M and I have to go to his brother’s birthday party, and M’s mother told him that he has to come out to his father today. Otherwise she will tell Mr. Homophobe that his son is pansexual herself. It’s going to be a long day.

Maybe I did not deserve how I was being treated, but neither did he deserve to be treated the way he was either. Whether I made that explicitly clear earlier or not, I will accept the blame for any misunderstandings, and I am sorry…

I am sorry I hurt everyone, and I love you all more than ever. It hurts that I lost all of you in one fell swoop just because I could not handle it anymore. You have stronger shoulders than I do because you deal with these things every day, and I could not handle it for a few measly weeks.

All I can say is how sorry I am and how much I miss all of you: the one who knows me the best, the one who understands my love languages the best, the one who forgives the best, the one who grounds me the best, the one who knows how to make me laugh the hardest, the one who makes me feel like I am perfect the way I am, the ones who make me feel like everything is going to be ok, the one who always surprises me…

I know it will never be the same again, but I do hope that you can all forgive me, some day, somehow…

YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER.
One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you—as will happen to any abused woman from time to time—he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straitjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy.

Abuse manipulates and twists a child’s natural sense of trust and love. Her innocent feelings are belittled or mocked and she learns to ignore her feelings. She can’t afford to feel the full range of feelings in her body while she’s being abused—pain, outrage, hate, vengeance, confusion, arousal. So she short-circuits them and goes numb. For many children, any expression of feelings, even a single tear, is cause for more severe abuse. Again, the only recourse is to shut down. Feelings go underground.